russians, jews, and the pogroms of 1881...

Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881–1882

Anti-Jewish pogroms rocked the Russian Empire in 1881–2, plungingboth the Jewish community and the imperial authorities into crisis.Focusing on a wide range of responses to the pogroms, this book offersthe most comprehensive, balanced, and complex study of the crisis todate. It presents a nuanced account of the diversity of Jewish politicalreactions and introduces a wealth of new sources covering Russian andother non-Jewish reactions to these events. Seeking to answer the ques-tion of what caused the pogroms’ outbreak and spread, the book providesa fuller picture of how officials at every level responded to the nationalemergency and irrevocably lays to rest the myth that the authoritiesinstigated or tolerated the pogroms. This is essential reading not onlyfor Russian and Jewish historians but also for those interested in thestudy of ethnic violence more generally.

john doyle klier (1944–2007) was the Sidney and Elizabeth CorobProfessor of Modern Jewish History in the Hebrew and Jewish StudiesDepartment at University College London. His earlier books, RussiaGathers Her Jews (1985) and Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question(Cambridge, 1995), are standard works in modern Russian-Jewish his-tory, along with Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History(coeditor, Cambridge, 1992).

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Frontispiece “Chase a fly out of the door, and it returns through thewindow. Save us, Lord, from hunger, plagues, floods, fire, and theinvasion of foreign tribes” (Evreiskii vopros v kartinakh, 1884).

“ivan : What trouble these Jews are! You haven’t finished building a hutand a fence, setting up a garden and a patch, you look around, andthese Jews sneak in and grow heavy like bugs, and neither yourself noryour kids have anywhere to stay. Now, will you leave the hut!

gershko (from behind): Hello, Ivan, how do you do?ivan : What do you want here? Get away! I have enough work withoutyou!

gershko : But we do so well in your house; and we won’t interfere withyour work, we just set up our small shops, bring in our family, we willlend you money – whereas you will have a walk and a drink, as theworking man needs strengthening; with us, you don’t even needmoney . . . you just bring a small measure of oats and a quarter ofwheat, we will accept all.”






Russians, Jews, and thePogroms of 1881–1882

John Doyle Klier






cambridge univers ity pressCambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town,Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City

Cambridge University PressThe Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press,New York

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© John Klier 2011

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,no reproduction of any part may take place without the writtenpermission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2011

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication dataKlier, John.Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881–1882 / John Doyle Klier.p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.ISBN 978-0-521-89548-4 (hardback)1. Jews – Persecutions – Russia. 2. Pogroms – Russia.3. Jews – Russia – Social conditions – 19th century. 4. Russia – Ethnicrelations. I. Title.DS134.84K55 2011305.8920404709034–dc22 2010031215

ISBN 978-0-521-89548-4 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence oraccuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred toin this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on suchwebsites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.






Contents

Editors’ preface page viiList of figures xList of maps xiiForeword xiiiAcknowledgements xviiNote on dates and transliteration xviiiList of acronyms xix

Introduction: the Russian Empire and its Jews 1

Part I

1 The pogroms of 1881–1882 17

2 What was a pogrom? 58

Part II

3 Confronting the pogroms 91

4 Russian society views the pogroms 128

5 The crystallization of prejudice 178

6 Prejudice into policy 207

7 The pogroms as foreign policy crisis 234

Part III

8 Jewish responses to the pogroms 255

9 The Jewish press and the emigration crisis 296

10 Politics without prophecy 324

11 The pogroms as humanitarian crisis 365

v






Epilogue: legends of the pogroms 384

Appendix 415Glossary 460Bibliography 463Index 478

vi Contents






Editors’ preface

JohnDoyle Klier died on 23 September 2007. At the age of only sixty-two,he was at the height of his powers as a scholar. This book was the lastmajor project that John completed. Our task has been far from onerous.At the time of his death, John had completed the manuscript for thisbook and responded to the readers’ reports. We undertook the revisionshe proposed, especially those regarding the reorganization of the mat-erial. While the first part sets the stage, the second focuses predominantlyon non-Jewish and the third predominantly on Jewish responses to thepogroms. The manuscript has obviously been copy-edited, but we havebarely changed the actual text.We are grateful to the colleagues who helpedus with queries that arose along the way.

The selection of the illustrations has ultimately been ours. In somecases it was quite clear from the manuscript which illustrations John hadinmind; in others we have chosen from John’s files the images that seemedmost suitable. Presumably hewould havewanted to comment on the natureand provenance of these illustrations, something we are in no position to doin his place.1

Clearly, John did not have the chance to step back and take one lastcareful look at the revised version as it now stands. He would doubtlesshave wanted to make further changes at this stage to round off the book inits final form.

As an appendix to this book, the reader will find a chronological list ofanti-Jewish violence and related developments in Imperial Russia in theyears 1881–2 that John was able to document on the basis of his archivalresearch. By nomeans all of the cited material has been used for this book.Based on John’s notebooks we have been able to link each entry in the listdirectly to an archival reference, which makes this a valuable resourcefor further research in the field of Russian Jewish history. The map on

1 Cf. John D. Klier, “Iskusstvo i pogromy. Khudozhestvennoe otobrazhenie antievreiskogonasiliia v imperskoi Rossii (1871–1903 gody),” in O. V. Budnitskii, et al., eds., Russko-evreiskaia kultura (Moscow, 2006), 437–52.

vii






pp. xxii–xxiv records all those sites of anti-Jewish violence mentioned inthis list for the period between 15 April and 10 May 1881 whose locationcould be clearly identified. We are grateful to Cath D’Alton (UCL) forthe realization of Map 2 and thank Tim Aspden who produced Map 1on p. xxi for John’s previous book, Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question,1855–1881 (Cambridge, 1996). Finally our thanks go to all the colleaguesat Cambridge University Press who have helped bring this project tofruition.

John wanted to dedicate this book to “three scholars who have donemuch to direct and inspire me as a scholar of Russia and Russian Jewishhistory,”Ralph T. Fisher, Hans Rogger, and Jonathan Frankel. Under thecircumstances it would have seemed strange to simply dedicate the bookto these three colleagues in the usual way, and we have instead decided touse this opportunity to do so on John’s behalf.

From 1960 to 1987, Ralph T. Fisher was the director of the Russianand East European Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where John took his doctorate in 1975. John felt deeplyindebted to Fisher for accepting him on the program and for nurturinghis achievements. Fisher’s personal generosity of spirit and energy madethe center a home and a springboard for John and many other graduatesof the program.

John regarded Hans Rogger as an inspirational pioneer in RussianJewish history. He frequently acknowledged the role that Rogger hadplayed in inspiring scholarly debate beyond the conspiracy theoryapproach to Russian Jewish history in general and the pogroms in partic-ular. John concluded his obituary for Rogger on a personal note, explai-ning that,

To embark upon research on the history of Russian Jewry in the 1970s, as I did,meant, inevitably, becoming a “revisionist”. . . Any young scholar, therefore, was“working without a net,” making hypotheses that seemed to go against a century-old scholarly consensus. The appearance of Rogger’s articles and his demand fora re-examination of assumptions and beliefs were of enormous psychologicalencouragement and support.2

For scholars of Jewish history in Eastern Europe, the academic year2007–8was unusually bleak: having begunwith John’s death it ended withthe death of Jonathan Frankel on 7 May 2008. Their longstanding pro-fessional relationship was characterized by warm collegiality, mutualappreciation, and friendship. John greatly admired and respectedFrankel’s work and, in response to the readers’ reports for this book,

2 JohnD.Klier, “HansRogger, 1923–2002,”East European Jewish Affairs, 32, 1 (2002), 152.

viii Editors’ preface






John wrote that he considered “Frankel’s to be the definitive descriptionof the rise of the so-called New Jewish Politics.”

LARS FISCHER

FRANÇOIS GUESNET

HELEN KLIER

Editors’ preface ix






Figures

Frontispiece “Chase a fly out of the door, and it returnsthrough the window. Save us, Lord, from hunger,plagues, floods, fire, and the invasion of foreign tribes”(Evreiskii vopros v kartinakh, 1884). page ii

1 Well-to-do bystanders observing the pogrom of 1871in Odessa. Drawing by Vasilii V. Vakhrenov. Source:Robert Weinberg, “Visualizing Pogroms in RussianHistory,” Jewish History, 12, 1 (1998), 71–92. 67

2 “Before the Justice of the Peace” (Maiak, 1882). 693 A woman and her children displaying Christian religious

artefacts during the pogrom of 1871 in Odessa. Drawingby Vasilii V. Vakhrenov. Source: Robert Weinberg,“Visualizing Pogroms in Russian History,” JewishHistory, 12, 1 (1998), 71–92. 85

4 and 5 Onlookers observing the pogrom of 1871 in Odessa.Drawings by Vasilii V. Vakhrenov. Source: RobertWeinberg, “Visualizing Pogroms in Russian History,”Jewish History, 12, 1 (1998), 71–92. 87–8

6 “Productive work of Russian Jews at its best”(Evreiskii vopros v kartinakh, 1884). 137

7 “First and second meeting” (Evreiskii vopros v kartinakh,1884). 138

8 “Hamlet. To beat or not to beat? That is the question!”(Bundy’lnik, 1881). 140

9 “Fiat lux!! Episode from the history of the Pressburgdefenders of liberty” (Maiak, 1882). 142

10 “The new Muscovite invasion” (Bolond istók, 14/V/1882). 24911 “Outward bound” (Bundy’lnik, 1881). 266

x






12 “Interned Jewish Refugees in Brody Waiting to BeRepatriated to Russia.” Drawing by Frederic de Haenenfrom a sketch by Paweł Merwart (Le Monde Illustré,1338:18/XI/1882, 320). Courtesy of the British Library. 268

13 “The Repatriation of Jewish Refugees. The Waiting Hall ofthe Nordbahnhof in Vienna at the Moment of Departure.”Drawing by Frederic de Haenen from a sketch by PawełMerwart (Le Monde Illustré, 1328:9/IX/1882, 165).Courtesy of the British Library. 270

14 “The Modern Moses.” Caricature by Joseph Kepplerand Frederick Burr Opper (Puck, 30 November 1881).Courtesy of V&A Images/Victoria and Albert Museum,London. 274

15 “Assault on a Jew in the Presence of the Military at Kiev”(Illustrated London News, 78:2,194:4/VI/1881, 549).Courtesy of UCL Library Services, Special Collections. 366

16 “Plundering a Brandy Shop at Kiev” (Illustrated LondonNews, 78:2,194:4/VI/1881, 549). Courtesy of UCLLibrary Services, Special Collections. 367

17 “Persecution of the Jews in Russia: Scene Inside theArsenal at Kiev” (Illustrated London News, 78:2,196:18/VI/1881, 616). Courtesy of UCL Library Services,Special Collections. 368

18 The flight of Jews from a Podolian settlement. From asketch by G. Broling (Leipziger Illustrirte Zeitung,2029:20/V/1882, 399). Courtesy of the British Library. 369

19 The popular imagery lives on. We are grateful to SeymourChwast for his permission to reproduce the illustration. 414

List of figures xi






Maps

1 Areas reserved for Jewish residence within theRussian Empire in 1855 (Pale of Settlement) page xxi

2 Sites of anti-Jewish violence, 15 April to 10 May 1881 xxii

xii






Foreword

The anti-Jewish riots, or pogroms, which broke out in the Russian Empirein mid-April 1881, are seen as a decisive moment in modern Jewishhistory. Devout Jewish contemporaries found an analogy in the “southernstorms” invoked by the prophet Isaiah. The more secular were quick tolabel them “a sharp turning point in the historical life of the Jewishpeople.”1 Many of the responses engendered within the Russian Jewishcommunity, such as greater national self-awareness and skepticismtoward liberal panaceas of emancipation, were already present in Jewishsociety in embryo. The events of 1881–2 speeded up their gestation. Theresult was the rapid development of a modern, international Jewishpolitics.

Yet it must be understood that the pogroms represented a crisis for theRussian Empire as well. For the better part of two years rioting wasendemic across a wide swath of a strategic region of the empire. Majorcities, such as Kiev and Elisavetgrad, fell under mob control. The coun-tryside was unsettled by pogroms and rumors of pogroms. The urbanproletariat and the rural peasantry, the two groups feared most by thesecurity-minded government, threatened to slip from state control. Theability of the imperial authorities to maintain stability, law, and order wascalled into question. Matters were in no way improved when the author-ities had to rely on deadly force in order to reclaim control of the streets,and found themselves cast in the uncomfortable guise of protectors ofan unpopular minority. Control was wrested from the rioters, the po-gromshchiki, only through stationing large contingents of troops throughoutthe troubled areas, thus undermining the army’s effectiveness in the defenseof the realm. The pogroms threatened to have a ruinous impact on thenational economy.

1 Rassvet (20:16/V/1882).

xiii






The pogroms also exacted a price in foreign relations. The frontierswith Austria-Hungary and Germany were compromised by the uncon-trolled flight of thousands of Jewish refugees across the border. Russiabecame the target of protest campaigns and was threatened with diplo-matic intervention.Negotiations for a strategic foreign loan collapsed, andthe value of Russian bonds plummeted on international stock exchanges.

The pogroms also called into question a century of social engineeringdesigned to resolve the so-called JewishQuestion inRussia.Critics declaredthat established policies had signally failed in their goal of integratingthe Jews into imperial Russian society. Faced with a national emergency,Russian lawmakers were forced to act rapidly to develop new policies, in away that was the antithesis of the Russian bureaucracy’s customarily cau-tious approach to change.

Contemporary research has dispelled the myth that Russian officialswere responsible for instigating, permitting, or approving the pogroms.But if instigation is ruled out, another question looms:What was the causeof the outbreak and spread of the pogroms? This study seeks to answerthat question, in particular by making use of the substantial informationprovided by the opening of archives in Eastern Europe in the post-Sovietperiod. This documentation provides a fuller picture of how officials atevery level responded to the pogroms, not just during their initial outbreakin 1881, but also upon their reappearance in 1882.

There is a particular need to integrate the history of the Russian po-groms into the emergent study of ethnic and nationalist conflict andcollective violence. As two leading specialists define the task, “we shouldseek to identify, analyse, and explain the heterogeneous processes andmechanisms involved in generating the varied instances of what we all toocasually lump together . . . as ‘ethnic violence.’ This can be accomplishedonly through a research strategy firmly committed to disaggregation inboth data collection and theory building.”2 An enhanced study of thepogroms has a special role to play in this regard. Researchers of ethnicconflict and collective violence have tended to exclude the case of po-groms,3 or to view them as a subcategory.4 When attention is directed topogroms for comparative purposes, examples are drawn almost entirelyfrom the twentieth century, and these events are then read back into theearlier period of 1881–2.5

2 Rogers Brubaker and David D. Laitin, “Ethnic and Nationalist Violence,” Annual Reviewof Sociology, 24 (1998), 447.

3 Ibid., 429.4 Donald L. Horowitz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2001), 20.5 See, for example, Paul R. Brass, ed., Riots and Pogroms (Basingstoke, 1996), in which theOdessa pogrom of 1905 is treated as an archetype for comparative purposes, 1–55.

xiv Foreword






This study seeks to redress this imbalance. As Donald L. Horowitzdefines the general task, “if there is ever to be a single, coherent theory ofcollective violence, it will be created after there are a substantial body oftheory and some reliable findings about the specific varieties of collectiveviolence: about revolutions, about terrorism, about coups, about riots.That day has still not arrived, and the fact that it has not arrived arguesfor a strategy of proceeding from the bottom up, rather than from thetop down.”6 From the theoretical perspective, therefore, this study has adouble task. The first is to provide an accurate picture, at the micro-level,of the diverse incidents that comprised the pogroms of 1881–2. It willfollow Heinz-Dietrich Löwe’s call for “detailed studies of individualpogroms at different times and in different places.”7 Once this objectivehas been achieved, the second is to use the recent scholarly literaturedevoted to ethnic conflict and collective violence to gain deeper perspec-tives into the pogrom phenomenon.

This study builds on contemporary scholarship devoted to the crisis of1881–2. The starting point is Hans Rogger’s classic critique of the widelypresumed “pogrom policy” in the Russian Empire. Rogger’s lead wasfollowed by I. Michael Aronson, who provided a definitive rejection ofthe myth that the pogroms of 1881 were organized, instigated, and spreadby officials of the imperial government or by “dark forces” close to them.One of the tasks of the present study is to explore how this widely acceptedlegend came about, and why it has endured so persistently in the secon-dary literature.

Jonathan Frankel’s magisterial Prophecy and Politics provides the classicstudy of Jewish responses to the pogroms, especially the emergence of aso-called New Jewish Politics, expressed variously in proto-Zionism or aspecifically Jewish brand of socialism. These innovations contained anexplicit rejection of the “old politics” conducted by the established Jewishcommunal leadership. The new, self-proclaimed leaders legitimized theirclaims and activities by emphasizing what they decried as the incompe-tence and failure of the old leadership. The present work offers a morebalanced view of the activities of the “elite secular Jewish leadership,”clustered around the group I call the “Gintsburg Circle.”This study is thusin dialogue with Frankel’s work, as indicated by the title of Chapter 10,“Politics without prophecy,” a study of events stripped of their mythicalcharacter.

6 Horowitz, Deadly Ethnic Riot, 41–2.7 Heinz-Dietrich Löwe, “Pogroms in Russia: Explanations, Comparisons, Suggestions,”Jewish Social Studies, 11, 1 (2004), 23.

Foreword xv






This study records other responses, such as the rise of reformistreligious movements, which have been dismissed as unimportant byscholars, yet which attracted a good deal of attention at the time. Thestudy will also explore the attitude of Russian officials to the gamut ofJewish activities, such as emigration or internal reform. This narrative isabsent from the scholarly literature, which has tacitly assumed that thestate opposed any Jewish initiatives.

It is an underlying assumption of this book that the status of Jews inthe Russian Empire was fated to change with or without the crisis of1881–2. For example, in 1880 officials within the Ministry of InternalAffairs (MVD) were questioning the efficacy of the Pale of Settlement,even as the conservative press was launching a campaign to limit theadmission of Jews to state schools. The pogroms ensured that debatesconcerning the Jews were accelerated, while the development of newpolicies took place in an atmosphere of emergency and crisis.

xvi Foreword






Acknowledgements

If thanks were given to all those who assisted this study, there would be noone left to review it. I do wish to thank those who have read one or more ofits many drafts, especially Jonathan Frankel, who has been a friendly criticthroughout. Much of the manuscript’s final draft was completed while Iwas a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the Universityof Pennsylvania. I particularly appreciate the criticisms and suggestionsof Moshe Rosman, Marcos Silber, Gerald Surh, and François Guesnet.I wish especially to thank Viktor Efimovich Kel’ner, my good friendand colleague, for his invaluable bibliographical assistance. For technicaland bibliographical help I would like to acknowledge Dmitrii Eliashevich,Victoria Khiterer, Anatolii Khaesh, Aleksandr Lokshin, Kati Vörös, andTsila Ratner. I am especially grateful to all the librarians and archivistswho have assisted me at the institutions cited in the bibliography.

Support for my research has been provided by the British Academy,the US National Endowment for the Humanities, the Dean’s Fund, theGraduate Research Fund, and the Institute of Jewish Studies at UniversityCollege London, and the University of London Central Research Fund.

xvii






Note on dates and transliteration

All Russian dates are according to the Julian calendar (Old Style, OS),twelve days behind the Gregorian calendar (New Style, NS) in the nine-teenth century. All western dates are New Style, while Polish dates aredouble-numbered, as was the practice in the Kingdom of Poland.

In transliterating from Russian, I follow the Library of Congress system.I have generally retained hard and soft signs in the footnotes, but haveomitted them in themain text for familiar or oft-used names. Thus: Ignatiev(not Ignat’ev),Drenteln (not Drentel’n), Bilbasov (not Bil’basov); for placenames, Kharkov (not Khar’kov), Vilna (not Vil’na), Orel (not Orel’).I employ modern Russian orthography.

Yiddish transliteration follows the system employed by YIVO; Hebrewthe system of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. In both cases, diacritical marksand silent letters are omitted.

Foreign terms are generally italicized, at least in the first instance.Commonly used terms (and acronyms) unlikely to be familiar to all read-ers are found in the glossary.

I have used the letter R in front of sums to designate Russian rubles.

xviii






Acronyms

AIU Alliance Israélite UniverselleAVPRI Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi imperiiGARF Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi federatsiiGUDP Chief Administration for Press AffairsHEAS Hebrew Emigrant Aid SocietyIAGM Istoricheskii arkhiv goroda MoskvyIRJQ John D. Klier, Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question, 1855–1881

(Cambridge, 1996)IuRRS Southern Russian Workers UnionJC Jewish ChronicleJNL Jewish National LibraryJP Justice of the PeaceK-A G. Ia. Krasnyi-Admoni, ed.,Materialy dlia istorii antievreiskikh

pogromov v Rossii, vol. II, Vos’midesiatye gody (15 aprelia 1881g.–29 fevralia 1882 g.) Moscow and Petrograd, 1923

LVIA Lietuvos Valstybes Istorijos ArchyvasMHC Mansion House CommitteeMID Ministry of Foreign AffairsMVD Ministry of Internal AffairsNKhV Nedel’naia khronika VoskhodaOPE Society for the Spread of Enlightenment Among the Jews of

RussiaORT Society for the Spread of Productive Work Among the JewsPD Parliamentary DebatesRERC Russian Emigrant Relief CommitteeRGIA Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhivRJC Russo-Jewish CommitteeRNB Rossiiskaia natsional’naia bibliotekaRVIA Rossiiskii voenno-istoricheskii arkhivSPb St. PetersburgTsDIAK Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi istorichnyi arkhiv Ukraïny

xix






Moscow

St. PetersburgESTLAND

Warsaw

PLOCKLOMZA

KALISZ

RADOM

KIELCE

CHELM

SIEDLCE

SUW

ALKI

LUB

LINPIO

TRKO

W

WARSAW

LIVLAND

KURLAND

ST.PETERSBURG

PSKOV

VITEBSK

MOGILEV

SMOLENSK

KALUGA

OREL

TULA

KURSK

RIAZAN

TAMBOV

VORONEZH

PENZA

VLADIMIRMOSCOW

TVER

IAROSLAV KOSTROMA

VOLOGDA

NOVGOROD

FINLAND

OLONETS

ARCHANGELSWEDEN

GERMANY

AUSTRIANEMPIRE

DANUBIANPRINCIPALITIES

Provinces comprisingthe Kingdom of Poland

Provinces comprising thePale of Jewish Settlement

KOVNO

VILNA

MINSKGRODNO

VOLYNIA

KIEVPODOLIA

BE

SS

AR

AB

IA

KHERSON

POLTAVA

CHERNIGOV

KHARKOV

TAURIDE

KUBAN

EKATERINOSLAV DON

STAVROPOL

TEREK

KUTAISCHERNOMOR

Ba

l ti c

Se

a

B l a c k S e a0 300kilometers

SA

RAT

OV

NIZ

HN

IIN

OV

GO

RO

D

Brody

1 Areas reserved for Jewish residence within the Russian Empire in 1855(Pale of Settlement)

Maps xxi






2 Sites of anti-Jewish violence, 15 April to 10 May 1881

xxii Maps






Maps xxiii






xxiv Maps






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